History and Updates
='History of the Game'= Tanki Online was the First Flash-Based 3D Online game made by AlternativaPlatform. On June 4, 2013 Tanki celebrated its fourth year in the internet. A lot of significant things happened, and we all got a valuable experience. New game function and modes were added. An important event for the project was the emergence of technical support. This brought Tanki Online to an all-new level. Developers never stopped improving the game both functionally and aesthetically. This article is for those who want to know about the past of Tanki Online and its origins. Tanki has already got 40 000 000 players! 'Tanks for Two (late 90s)' Game play of Tanks for Two Roughly 15 years ago, there was an ancestor of Tanki Online - It was a game called Tanks for Two. It was made as an experiment, by young Anton Volkov (wolf) and Alexander Karpovich (karp) - founders of AlternativaPlatform and Tanki Online. Miniature, simple, with graphic that reminded players of old java-games for only two players - it was that simple. Thanks to this project, there came the idea of a tank multiplayer shooter. Tanks (late 2008 - early 2009) 2 months before the start of active development of Tanki Online by AlternativaPlatform team, they came up with a demo what was supposed to demonstrate the possibilities of the server platform. The code name for the demo was "Tanks". It was a multiplayer action game about tanks based on Flash. The demo was developed using the Alternativa3D 5 graphics engine. Tanks became the prototype of Tanki Online. The garage there was more diverse than in Tanks for Two. Players had a choice of three types of tanks: light, medium and heavy. However, there was only one gun. It required one, two and three hits to destroy light, medium and heavy hull respectively. Tanks had only one map that actually was a single 3D-model (maps in Tanki Online are made of many blocks called props). It also contained water and trees. As a result of development, the team got prototypes of Smoky turret and Hunter hull. The dream of a multiplayer action game about tanks began to come true. Tanki Online Beginning (2009) The beginnings of parkour Tanks of developers (from left to right: antonio, Zykov, danilova, arts80, Karp) Private Zykov is examining the map. It is noteworthy that at this point, the game got an award at the Game Developers Conference (GDC 2009) in the category "Best game without a publisher." This clearly shows that the game received international recognition already in the test phase. Just one month after that, on June 4, open testing began. Speech of Anton Volkov in which he invites everyone who is interested to take part in the game's open testing: The game was on main server in the beginning of summer 2009. Community was just beginning to form itself. Everyone was new to each other. Developers played together with all the other players. Prices were completely different, the game was full of bugs, glitches and lags. In short, one may say it was total chaos ... For example, Firebird had an awfully long visual after-effect on the enemy. This effect only vanished after server restart. Of course this bug was quickly corrected. Apart from hull and turret, it was also possible to change the tank's engine. Various elements of tanks were gradually wearing out. Hulls - with each hit they got, turrets - from every shot they fired and the engine got worn out with the distance it covered. It was more realistic at that time. Life was difficult for newbies as everything was wearing out really quickly and there were not enough funds to constantly repair it. So developers had to give up these elements of game play. There were no second generation turrets and hulls, the barrel of Railgun had the length of Wasp and the damage it did was huge (M0 Railgun had a damage of around 100 HP) During that time, there was only one kind of battle supply - First Aid Kit. The picture on it showed a syringe instead of a red cross that we got used to so much. That's why players that were using it were often called druggers while the supply itself was commonly known as "drug". At the same time we started seeing first players who were practicing parkour. There was an idea of introducing a racing mode. Map-maker called Avocado makes a map called Monte Carlo that was supposed to become one of racing tracks. The idea was scrapped, while the map remained. It's still quite popular with players. Capture the Flag mode was added to the game on July 31, 2009. Since then Tanki Online has changed a lot and now there are a few things that remind us of this period. (late 2009 - mid 2010) Fighting in CTF mode, 1000 crystals Gold Box, physics bugs and First Marshal in Tanki Online - T7000. By the time the game already had 200 000 players. That's when double damage, double armor, nitro and mine supplies were introduced. From that moment activated supplies were shown on top of players' tanks. Administration started to organize various contests. Vitamin Group, a partner of AlternativaPlatform, combined Tanki Online with its interactive screen, organizing multi-touch support on Adobe Flash Player 10.1. In 2009 developers decided to create a gun that could kill enemies and heal teammates at the same time. This is how isida was born. Originally players could heal themselves using Isida (when shooting). This fact made Isida the most powerful gun hence unbalancing the game. Game designers had to remove this feature. Since then the turret became the Isida we all know today. Coming close to the Christmas and New Year, a special gift for all tank men was released - an experimental version of Gold Box with 1000 crystals in it. After that the value of the box was changed to 100 crystals and it was left in the game. Physics of tanks weren't perfect. There were various bugs in geometry of levels. For example, there was a so-called UFO effect. The reason was simple: one of props had an invisible element stretching into the sky. Lots of changes were coming soon. The game had already had around 500,000 players. A notable event was the appearance of the first marshal. His nickname was T7000. At the end of 2009 AlternativaPlatform started working on a new project called Tanki Online 2.0 while continuing to develop existing Tanki Online. This was meant to be an absolutely new product with more realistic graphics, more user-friendly interface and a whole lot more useful functions (social networks, mobile platform, and so on). However, after a year and a half of development there was a change of plans and it was decided to cancel the project and add all the new functions (new server platform, updated graphics, etc.) into the existing version of Tanki Online step by step. Era of the Second Generation Doing parkour using second generation hulls and turrets. Chinese Tanki in action The name of the period itself explains global changes in Tanki Online. Second generation of weapons and hulls was introduced. They were three hulls: Viking, Hornet and Mammoth and three turrets: Thunder, Ricochet and Freeze. Many new maps were added. The looks of the game changed significantly. Tanki Online had from 1 million to 4 million active players at that time. The demand for first generation weapons dropped significantly. There were rumors about a mysterious gun called Shaft. Chinese server of Tanki Online was launched in April 2010. Ivan Zykov, art director of AlternativaPlatform said: On May 7, 2010 Tanki Online became Site of the Day on Favorite Website Awards The making of Shaft (2011-2012) This was the most awaited gun in the history of Tanki Online, Shaft. The marketing department says that, when being first released, it was bought at a speed of 3 guns per second. The length of the gun was such that if you had it on a wasp, it would be two times the size of the hull. At first, Shaft had a lot of disadvantages but the biggest of which was its inability to hold a full charge (it left the barrel as soon as you fully charged the gun). But there was one good point - the damage it dealt - M3 Shaft had a damage of 250! It was temporarily removed from the game for re-balancing. The updated Shaft was able to hold its charge, but M3 damage was lowered from 250 to 200. On March 25, 2012 Tanki Online welcomed its 10 millionth player! His nickname was lYonsl. The game was getting very popular. The Rebalance The Rebalance - is a series of radical changes in Tanki. The game designers have been preparing for it for a long time. It's arguably the biggest change in in Tanki Online's History! 'For one to realize that the game will be better after the rebalance, one has to refer to the various aspects of "Tanki Online". Like said before, it is arguably the largest update in Tanki, so we dedicated an entire page to discuss this: 'THE REBALANCE Mysterious Green Triangle On April 1 players spotted a strange item in their Garages - the Green Triangle. Lots of speculations were made regarding its origin and purpose. Many thought that it was an element of some quest. Players were even calling battles "Green Triangle". Developers introduced really expensive paints with good protection from various turrets. On February 14, 2011 a new gun was added to the main servers - the famous Smoky XT. It was more expensive than a standard Smoky and had better parameters. During one week, any player with a rank of Warrant Officer 1 and higher could buy Smoky XT and use it till February 22. The next day Smoky XT's damage was increased and it was decided to keep the gun in the game for two more days. The event got lots of feedback from players (not a surprise as there were no changes like that before). The new gun became a number one discussion topic both in the game and in the forum. At 4:00 (UTC+0) on February 24 Smoky XT was confisticated from the game forever. Important Updates Update 1.100 (second half of 2012) September 6 became a really special day for the project as it brought two big changes in the game, a new game mode called Control Points, and the new graphics. 3 days after the 1.100 update we saw the 15 000 000th player registering in Tanki Online, his name was adilov.amir. In the beginning of October the Tanki Online forum was transferred to a new, more user-friendly engine. On November 23 we saw the removal of Madness map from the servers because of its configuration. December 17 brought us one of the most serious updates - rebalance. The update changed the characteristics of the guns and their availability according to ranks. Update 196 and 204: New friend system Update 196 and 204 were very important for the friend system. When 196 was out we could invite friends to battles and see the server where they are. Update 204 made the friend table different and now you can see friend's server even if he isn't in a battle. It made it so that you cannot invite your friends to battles not for their rank . Thus, no more useless low-rank battle invites to high-rankers. Note: Dates are in this format: (Day of month, month, year) Update 205 (11.12.2013): New physics Update 205 is very important. It brought us new physics to hulls and turrets. Like for example - Mammoth is no longer the heaviest hull in the game - its Titan (although Mammoth is still the most armored)! Now Titan can push Mammoth out of the map! All tanks has been made a lot faster. You can really know the difference when we use Hornets or Wasps. New physics like faster tanks, lower frost effect from Freeze, slowed down fire-rate of M3 Twins, etc. Everything which was made to enhance Tanki's gameplay. The following video was made a few months before the update was released. Update 208 (28.12.2013): Micro-Upgrades, Rank-Up Rewards and Visual Affects Micro-Upgrades (MUs). Micro-upgrades are simply upgrades to anything in your garage (other than supplies and passes), to make them stronger.A cool addition is the discount of higher modifications of a turret/hull. More Information of MUs can be found right here: Micro Upgrades A new feature is called "Crystals for Rank-Ups. It basically give you crystals for every time you rank-up. People who are above the Rank of "Private" will receive the amount of crystals for their rank, plus all the crystals they should've have earned in their previous rank. This was only a ONE-TIME event. Here is the chart for how much crystals you got depending on your rank: After that event, anyone who ranked up got the amount of crystals only for that ONE rank. Here is a chart to show how much crystals you earn for ranking up each time: Also, there is a new visual effect that can be seen in-battle. All players can see you rank up while in the battle, and will congratulate you. Update 220 (30.1.2014): Changes in Maps Update 220 brought new and improved changes in the maps. First of all, the are no more "pairs" of maps. Examples include Silence I and II, Brest I and II, Highland I and II were reworked. Developers took ideas from each map from the pair, and condensed it all in one balanced and versatile map. They also changed many drop zones of supplies and crystal boxes in many maps, so it will always be accessible by players. Respawn places are also different. The most significantly changed maps are Solikamsk, Silence, Barda, Kungur, and Düsseldorf. They added plenty of new things in the maps, as well as keeping the key features. Developers have added CTF and CP to the majority of the maps. The amount of players in a map have also been changed. Some map's amount of players have been increased while others have been decreased. Now the amount of players in a map has yet another factor, which are the Battle modes. Different battle modes can now determine the number of players in the map. Also, the rank for playing in maps have also been changed. Now, more low rankers can play in maps that they couldn't previously. More over, by Warrant Officer 4, you can play in any type of map, regardless. Last but not least, an old map has come back with a new theme! This is the one and only Madness. It was deleted from Tanki for various reasons, but due to a huge amount of requests from players, Tanki has brought back Madness. It now has a "Moon" type of theme, similar to the theme Moon Silence had (which was also removed). Changing Equipment in Battles (25.3.2014) The name says it all. From now on, you can now change your equipment in the middle of the battle, without leaving the battle. Not only that, you can now browse other battles that you might want to join; again, without leaving the battle that you are currently in. Unfortunatel, you would have to self destruct if you spawned and changed your equipment. Update 245 (01.4.2014): Automatic Problem Detection Tanki released Update 245 which includes the system of automatic detection of performance problems. From now on, in case you have low FPS or high ping, you will be automatically getting a special message containing an instruction on how to solve the issue. it will also show link to the wiki if your problem persists. The notification will pop up after you leave the battle or change the equipment while in battle. Besides that, a ping indicator has been added to the game. All indicators, including the new one, will now change their color depending on the parameter value. Update 254 (23.4.2014): Balancing of Turrets and Hulls Update 254 brought numerous changes in parameters of all turrets and hulls in order to make the game more balanced. Balancing of turrets and hulls was a challenging and time-consuming task. There was an open testing held which Tanki carefully studied the feedback on specific items. The goal was to make sure that every player could achieve good results in battles, regardless of the turret and the hull being used. The maximum number of MU steps has changed, the number of MUs installed on your turret or hull will also change. Quite often in your favor: For example, if you upgraded 8 out of 10 steps, while the total number of steps available in now 5 instead of 10, you will now have 4 MUs out of 5. If the total number of steps is increased to 20, you will have 16 installed. Finally, if you completed 19 steps out of 20, while the total number has been decreased to 10, you now have not 9.5 but full 10 MUs. Also, if some of your MUs were in progress when we were changing the number of steps, they have been automatically completed! Update "A whole bunch of updates are out" (03.6.2014) *The Control Points mode has been updated. Now players respawn at their bases rather than at captured points. The only exception is Madness. Control Points is now available on all maps that support CTF. *Fort Knox is now available starting from the Corporal rank. For the initial rank , Recruit, it has been replaced with Sandal and Cross. *From now on, chats will become available from the 3rd rank (Gefreiter). This is a first measure in dealing with users who create alternative accounts to be able to break the rules without being disciplined on their main account. *The way the battle fund is split between team members has been changed. Each player will now receive a percentage of the battle fund, equal to the percentage of points he has contributed to his team’s battle score. *Gold box notification is now orange (harder to miss) *Capital “i” and lowercase “L” now look different *You can now add a player to your ignore list right from his or her context menu *Ability to disable main chat in Settings *Each skybox now consists of 6 separate textures, which makes the image clearer and brighter. Update 270 (03.7.2014) Almost all turrets and hulls have been tweaked to improve the game play; in addition, the following changes have been rolled out. * The effectiveness of first Aid Kits has been increased. It now restores up to 400 HP in 2 seconds and will remain active for a set amount of time, even after your HP have been fully restored. * First Aid Kit and Isida now remove freeze and burn effects. Isida only does this when interacting with allied tanks. * Mines now become active after 1 second instead of 2 seconds. * All battle modes now have a penalty for self-destruction, in the form of 1 kill and 5 points from the team’s score. * Due to the introduction of the self-destruct penalty, we have also updated the Polygon. The new version of the map makes it a lot more difficult to drive off the edge or push off another player. Server Distribution for Communities (06.8.2014) Depending on which version of the site you are using, the game will be suggesting which servers you should play on. This is being done to help the respective communities flourish, by giving them more of a common ground for interaction. The recommendations will be as follows; Servers 1 to 27 for the Russian community, 28 – 37 for the English community, and the remaining servers for the German community. However, these options aren’t restrictive, so you can also choose a server manually. New Anti-Flood System (08.8.2014) There is a new anti-flood system so that you can have a better experience in the chat. The system works by restricting the number of characters over time. The restriction may not necessarily apply to the whole message but even to a part of it. If you’ve used up your quota of characters for a set period of time, the extra ones will be highlighted in red, and instead of the “Send” button, you will see a timer telling you how long you have to wait before sending a message of such length. You can simply make the text shorter and send it, or wait till the time restriction is removed. Tanki developers say that if you’re well behaved in chat, the anti-flood system will not affect you in the least, except for the fact that you will see less flooding in the chat stream. MU Speedups Cheaper by Time (25.9.2014) The price of speeding up a micro upgrade now depends on the remaining wait time. The less time left to wait, the cheaper it is to instantly complete your micro-upgrade and install it. Here is an example: You purchase a micro-upgrade. You have the option to either wait for 10 hours, or speed it up at a cost of 1000 crystals. If you decide to wait, the price for the speedup will steadily decrease over time. Let’s say you decide to wait for 2 hours (20% of the total wait time). The price go down by 20%, so the speedup will cost 800 crystals instead of 1000. Smart Cooldowns (29.9.2014) Activating all supplies against an opponent who also has all supplies activated, is known to be irritating , as no one gets an advantage — double armor is compensated with double protection for the opponent, and you’re just wasting supplies. To eliminate this kind of situation, and turn supplies into a valuable gaming element, Tanki has introduced smart cooldowns. Activating one of the supplies puts it, and several other supplies in "cooldown." Now, a tank with all supplies activated is the result of a well planned combination of garage boosts and drop box supplies. To avoid confusion from having different active times for garage and drop box supplies, we have given them all the same cooldown time - 45 seconds. The update also includes unified icons for supplies both in the interface and in the game itself, as well as their improved indication. Bunch of Updates are Out (04.10.2014) A bunch of small but important changes to Tanki Online. * If you ever encounter an error inside the game, an informative notification will pop up stating the reason for the issue. It will also contain a link that will lead you back to the game, and a shortcut to a Wiki page where you can find out more on how to avoid this problem in the future * Using battle chats is now a lot easier and much more intuitive. Team messages are now a different color from those that are broadcast in general chat. The color also indicates whether the message you are writing will be seen by everyone or just your team. To switch between General chat and Team chat, just press TAB inside an open chat window. * For a newbie with little driving experience, flipping over is a common event. That’s why we’ve added a detailed help tip on how to get a tank back on its tracks if it accidentally flips over. The tip is only visible at low ranks, and in specific cases. * Now, you’re less likely to lose your account completely if it has been hacked. If your account is linked to an email address, it will not be displayed in the game’s interface; you will only see the first and last letter in your email address. That way, hackers won’t know which email will be used when restoring an account. Revision in the number of Servers (13.10.2014) Tanki have revised the number of active servers to achieve a better balance in server population. From now on, it should be a lot easier to find battles that fit your rank and experience. As of this update, the number of EN servers has been halved down to 10, and there are 2 DE servers instead of 3. New Visuals for Railgun and Isida (12.11.2014) The new visual effects for Railgun and Isida are now in the game. Isida’s effect used to look like an electric shock. However, its actual function is to repair or damage tanks using a stream of nano-bots. So the new visual effect reflects that. Railgun’s current effect used to look like a laser turret. In reality, it fires electromagnetic projectiles. Its new visual effect is based on that idea. Here is a video demonstrating how the new effects look. Hammer Update (12.11.2014) As of 18-12-14 one of the concept guns implemented by the developers has been released for battle. It had been discussed about thoroughly in a V-LOG that this gun, along with another prototype will see themselves come to life as the glorious year of 2014 comes to a close and a new era of discovery is put before us. The gun itself had been redesigned just weeks before launch date to fit in with the rest of the turret bloodline and the game mechanics that come with it are a first for the entire game itself. It has been the third time that Tanki Online has included a gun in its arsenal which resembles the mechanics of an actual gun, which for this case is a shotgun. Praises aside, this gun has received quite a lot of mixed reviews when it comes to overall game play and in-game competition, it seems that the gun itself has fallen into a jeopardy between the user and its own statistics, simply speaking, the gun is quite helpless on the battlefield against guns which fall into the Tier 1.5 - Tier 2 categories. It seems to be able to compete with the Smoky quite easily but when it comes to more advanced weaponry, such as the Thunder, the new gun just can't put up with the amount of mid-range damage and fails to cause considerable damage before dying. However, after testing the gun carefully it has been found that the gun is actually quite advantageous, especially when it comes to close range caliber combat, once the target is close enough, the Hammer can cause devastative damage without damaging itself by its own shots (an ability that was previously not possible by other melee range turrets). For now, it is the specifications of this gun that needs to be changed so that it can put up with the other guns in the field, other than that, the developers and artists have done a fantastic job in making a turret that can actually take on other turrets right after it's first launch. As the game slowly progresses, the gun will be improved and so will the game mechanics themselves which will enable a far greater scope for the future of this game. For now, the gun is well worth a shot :) Changes In Balance and More (23.4.2015) Tanki Online hadn't seen an update for quite some time, therefore, after seeing the "overpoweredness" of the Vulcan and the Hammer, the developers over at Tanki Online finally did quite some number crunching and provided the following changes: Changes in parameters of hulls and turrets Firebird * Increase in burning damage * Increase in reload speed Freeze * Differential freezing for enemy hulls and turrets, turrets are affected more by the freeze effect whereas hull speed is affected less drastically. * Increase in Damage. * Decrease in amount of energy. * Increase in recharge speed. Isida * Increase in range. * Decrease in damage cone width. * Increase in amount of energy. * Increase in reload speed. Hammer * Slower reload speed. * Wider cone of pellets. Twins * Serious increase in close range damage. * Decrease in long-range damage. * Increase in projectile speed. Ricochet * Increase in effective range. * Faster reloading. * Higher impact force. Smoky * Increase in standard damage. * Decrease in critical damage. Vulcan * Increase in self-burning damage. * Slower turret rotation speed when firing. * Lower impact force. Thunder * Increase in damage. * Decrease in rate of fire, * Reworked splash damage mechanism, Railgun * Increase in firing rate. Shaft * Increase in damage per shot in arcade mode (without scope). * No longer has penatrating ability since this was given to railgun only Improved Micro-upgrades (22.5.2015) *It is possible, with the same amount of crystals as before, to upgrade turret and hull parameters right to the level of the next modification: For example: a fully upgraded M2 will basically have the same parameters as a stock M3. *If a player fully micro-upgrades all of an item’s parameters, they will be able to get its next modification for free upon reaching the required rank. *Players can now use an item in battle even if it is in the process of being micro-upgraded. If the micro-upgrade is completed while in a battle, the new parameter will become effective after the next respawn. Changes in balance and more (01.7.2015) There were several changes to the way Repair Kits, Mines and Gold Boxes work, as well as many other changes regarding other aspects of the game. *'Changes in turret and hull parameters': There were many rebalances and tweaks made to turrets, and medium & heavy hulls. For detail look on how the parameters changed, click the link: HERE *'Changes in the way supplies and gold boxes work': - Repair Kit’s reload time is increased by 33% (from 30 to 40 seconds) = now slower - Repair Kit dependent cool down is decreased by 33% (from 15 to 10 seconds) - Mine reload time is decreased by 33% (from 30 to 20 seconds) = now faster - Mine’s dependent cool down time is decreased by 33% (from 15 to 10 seconds *Changes have also affected the gold box. Now the box is dropped 30 seconds after the notification, instead of 20 seconds as before the update. *'Icons for chat moderators': Chat candidates, moderators and administrators are now marked with special icons on battle and server chats. Finding someone who can help out on the chat will now be a lot easier. More importantly, impersonating a moderator will be virtually impossible. *'Camera speed adjustment': With the update, you can now manually adjust the speed of your turret rotation camera. Tanki X (September 15 2016) An early conspiracy said there would be a new game, which was finally made in September 15 2016. 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